Did you go to Mass this Christmas? Did you get to hear the Gospel reading about the genealogy of Jesus? Isn’t that such a great gospel reading?
Wait, you didn’t like it? Did you roll your eyes when it started, and maybe “checked out” for a few minutes? Or did your parish opt for the “abbreviated” [skip the brackets section] version or read one of the other options, so you didn’t even get to hear it?
Like much about our Catholic faith, when we don’t take the time to learn about it, to try to understand it, we can find it boring, uninteresting, preferring to skip it entirely. When we approach our faith, or even things as simple as this reading from that perspective, we are missing out, missing out on an opportunity to get to better know Jesus. Missing out learning how God even takes our failings, our troubled pasts, and turns them into something good.
Tamar, Judah, Solomon, and company are not exactly the ideal ancestors of the King of Kings; but in this video, Fr. Mike Schmitz shows how God can write straight with crooked lines, even when the line happens to be Jesus’ blood line. Join Fr. Mike in this Christmas special, wherein he makes the monotonous genealogy of Christ in Matthew’s Gospel more intriguing than an epic movie trailer.
Take 8 minutes to watch this video. Then take a few minutes to read Mt 1:1-25. It is time well spent to learn more about Jesus, how much He is more like us, in many ways we can’t even imagine. And what God can do even with our weaknesses and failures.